People enjoy the Albany Labor Day Picnic and Celebration at Cook Park in Colonie. (Jeff Couch / The Record)

COLONIE - To the tunes of Woody Guthrie and the smell of burgers on the grill, over 150 labor union members and their families attended the annual New York State AFL-CIO picnic in Cooke Park Monday afternoon. A focus this year was the minimum wage, underlined by scattered placards and banners emblazoned with the motto, "Make the Minimum Wage a Living Wage."

"The minimum wage has fallen way behind where it was 20, 30 years ago," said Jonathon Flanders, a railroad worker in Troy. Flanders is also the vice-president of the Troy Area Labor Council, and a member of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Currently, the minimum wage in New York State is $7.25 per hour, pursuant to the federal Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, except for tipped employees, for whom the federal minimum wage is $2.13 per hour. In a June poll, the Siena Research Institute found that 77 percent of a surveyed population of 807 would support raising the minimum wage.

As a national organization, the AFL-CIO supports raising the federal minimum wage; locally, the Troy Area Labor Council and several other labor organizations in the region passed a resolution in June promoting bringing the minimum wage to $8.50 per hour.

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According to the resolution, the reasons for this increase are manifold. The resolution cited statistics from the Hunger Action Network that show a family of three cannot be supported by a wage of less than $8.90 per hour, which equates to a yearly salary of $18,530. It also highlighted that 18 states have higher minimum wages than New York, and that, if the minimum had kept pace with the inflation rate over the past forty years, the minimum wage would be $10.80 per hour.

However, this resolution was not fully supported by all the members at the picnic, or even everyone in the Troy Area Labor Council. Flanders believes that an $8.50 minimum wage is "inadequate".

"A lot of the labor proposals don't ask for enough--they try to appear reasonable by saying 'Oh, we'll go up a dollar.' But given what's happened raising the minimum wage a dollar is insufficient," Flanders said. He believes that even a $10 minimum wage, such as that promoted by the Hunger Action Network, is too little.

The Network used Labor Day to urge Governor Cuomo to use an executive power to bring the minimum wage to $10 per hour. According to the Network, this would be achieved by convening a minimum wage board that could unilaterally raise the minimum wage if the Labor Commissioner deemed the minimum wage inadequate to support workers.

The Troy Area Labor minimum wage resolution took a different tact, urging Senator Majority Leader Dean Skelos to allow a minimum wage hike bill passed by the Assembly in () to come before the Senate, The bill would raise the minimum wage to $8.50.

The need for a higher minimum wage was reiterated by other union members around the Cooke Park space, including Ivette Alfonso, president of Citizen Action of New York, who was sitting on a bench outside the pavilion with her daughter.

"People need a living wage, but we also know that the more the minimum wage is depressed the less likely it is that anyone else going to get a raise, or going to get what should be equitable money for their labor," Alfonso said.

She works at the Unity Sunshine Centers in South Troy, and sees many parents working there at the minimum wage. "They should be compensated at a rate that will at least let them come home with something for their children," said Alfonso. "Part of helping children and helping families is making sure that they do have some leisure time."

In parallel with the arguments for a higher minimum wage, Angelica Clarke, a staff organizer for the Graduate Student Employees Union, explicated the plight of graduate assistants at SUNY schools.

"Graduate assistant students are actually paid less than minimum wage when you put them into hourly wages," said Clarke. These graduate students will usually receive stipends of $15,000 a year for a work week that should be 20-hours but, according to Clarke, is often closer to 35 hours.

In this system, Clarke explained, graduate assistants have to help teach classes of 80 or 100 students, while also completing coursework. Because of the coursework and class load graduate assistants are left without time to take on another job, and a stipend that does not cover living expenses. "Essentially you are a part-time teacher, and a full-time student," Clarke said. "They can't make ends meet."

The GSEU is focusing on attaining a new contract that has limits on the workload with which a graduate student can be saddled. Their last contract expired in 2009 and they have yet to re-enter negotiations.

While the minimum wage has been a focus of the labor movement for years, it is currently one that labor unions locally and across the state find most urgent.

"The 40 hour work week, lunch breaks, vacation time--they were fought for, they were never given to us," said Alfonso. "The next push is the livable wage."